Anonymity Unlimited

Every now and then while surfing Internet , your IP address is being watched and logged in forms of logs by the server or sites you visit. That raises an important question. How anonymous we are? When surfing the Web from the privacy of your living room, den or office, it may seem as if your movements online are completely anonymous. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

This post deals with various methods you can maintain anonymity , though not 100% , but still to a certain level. Various sites that act as intermediate between the source computer and destination servers are called proxy servers. Your requests go to the proxy, which relays them to the Web. The website sends the requested pages back to the proxy server, which then forwards them to your computer. Still this method is not very anonymous as all of your requests and IP(s) are stored on their server. This could easily lend itself to profiling.

Some of the proxy directory sites are :

• http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html
• http://www.proxy-list.net/
• http://www.proxy.org/cgi_proxies.shtml
  

People who want to achieve high security against being revealed, often use several proxy servers in sequence. To trace them, each of the servers must assist or be penetrated. If the servers are placed in different countries, tracing them becomes even more difficult.


Other method which I use is 3rd party softwares which check for available proxies and connects to them automatically. Some of the softwares are :

• Ultrasurf
• Your Freedom
  

While most of the users use ultrasurf with IE, it can be run with all web browsers. Just put 'localhost' in proxy and '9666' in port number in proxy settings of the browser.

I rely heavily on these two softwares, but when it comes to Linux, the best I like is Tor. According to their developers

A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.

In The End

Concluding the post, one thing is to remember, privacy is good but anonymity is bad. The rest is on you.

Everything I post will be in your Inbox, Subscribe via email below:

Related Entries